


The Kite

by ele_amato



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Ghost!Andrés, Grieving, Hurt No Comfort, I REGRET NOTHING, Longing, M/M, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:47:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27372172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ele_amato/pseuds/ele_amato
Summary: That morning, Andrés opened his eyes in the centre of the chapel.
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa & Palermo | Martín Berrote, Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	The Kite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colorfulcharades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorfulcharades/gifts).



He opened his eyes wide, blinked and looked around. He was in the monastery, yet something was wrong. A numbness passed through his body, as if asleep, and his mind was veiled by a thick mist, similar to that of autumn mornings.

He was in the centre of the chapel, yet he couldn't quite remember how he got there. Faint memories tickled his mind, undeveloped photos, unfinished poems. Pieces of a distant dream.

Andrés chuckled to himself, and what a strange dream it had been! He should certainly tell Martín. He could already imagine the man's amused expression, his bright blue eyes looking at him as he hung from every word of his story.

He walked towards their rooms, a wing parallel to the one where they used to spend most of their time working. As he walked down the long corridor, he paid no attention to the strange feeling that gripped his heart, to the silence that filled that monastery. To his footsteps that did not echo.

He walked briskly, with one pressing task in mind. To go to Martín. With each step, the next was a little faster. A race against his own demons, a strange anxiety growing in his chest, a feeling increasingly difficult to ignore in the back of his head. It felt like a race against time, but in reality it was nothing more than a fall. A fall into anguish, a descent into necessity, into anxiety, into a growing need to see the face of the man. The corridor seemed to lengthen, as if to mock his urgency, his distress.

And then, the crash.

Martín’s room was empty.  
Empty of his clothes, his books, his laughter, of him.

Andrés could almost hear the sound of the landing, the inevitable clash of limbs against the harshness of reality. He was Alice following the white rabbit, but at the end of the fall, this time, there was no Wonderland.

And it's almost funny, how everything can come back up in an instant.

People with vertigo have always been told not to look down. To ignore the precipice beneath their feet, close their eyes and let the danger pass. It is a way to survive the chilling fear that immobilizes you, that chains you and makes you a slave to your own body. Yet Andrés had never been good at resisting temptation. He looked down at his legs, at his feet, and it was as if that abyss swallowed him whole, hungry and mercilessly it took every part of him. Leaving behind only terror and pain.

So Andrés, that time, tried to scream. But no sound came out of his mouth. Instinctively he put his hands around his neck, a human and unconscious reaction, as if by doing so one could reach the vocal cords and fix the problem like with the hands of an old clock, to fix what was wrong, what makes them vulnerable.

Yet Andrés, under his fingers, had no vocal cords. Neither bones nor skin. In fact, he didn't even have fingers to clench with. He was an immaterial being, an abstract concept, something bodiless. A ghost, if you will. A memory, a story, an idea. But also remorse, resentment, guilt, regret.

In that room there was no living soul, neither Martín, nor Andrés.

Sometimes, the memories came first. Like a short film before his eyes, Andrés found himself in the centre of the chapel and relived the past days. Yet those memories were a bit faded, rounded at the corners, the film burnt on some frames. After all, to remember well you need a brain, but Andrés didn't have that, not anymore. He had only a conscience and a soul, and the memories were quickly lost in the waters of a river without dams.

When he woke up and had more awareness than other days, Andrés didn't go looking for his friend. He knew he would be facing the cliff. Instead he wandered around the monastery, stopped in front of the various relics scattered around the rooms and admired them. Of some he remembered their story, of the day and of the reason why he bought them or stole them from an auction house. Others, instead, he could continue to stare at for what seemed to be hours, yet they remained an empty canvas. So Andrés invented a story for them and smeared their canvases with tailor-made memories, memories that were nothing more than hopes.

Other times monks passed through the chapel. To carry out checks or for mere curiosity. Their faces no longer had the affable and welcoming looks of the past. Instead, now they wandered around that part of the monastery with caution, an irrational restlessness that shattered their insides, that sent shivers down their backs and made them turn several times to look over their shoulders. Andrés tried to speak, to scream, to make himself heard, to wave his arms and to get out of that miserable condition of existence. But he had neither arms nor mouth.

Going unnoticed was something he had not been familiar with for decades. He spent most of his life in search of looks, admiration, envy. He was eager for attention, feeding on it and turning it into fuel for his own engine. He needed dreamy gazes, those who looked at him as if he had always been a head above the others, something unattainable for the rest of the mortals. But, finally, he had to find out that he, too, was mortal.

He had spent so much time of his life acting like a god, that he forgot that he was nothing but human. A shame given to him at his birth, a miserable and pathetic existential condition, full of imperfection and pain. Of insecurities and hatred.  
Compliments and admiration were nothing more than a way to silence one's demons. To hide that he too, in the end, was hopelessly imperfect.

Was it, perhaps, the fate of the ignored one, his personal divine punishment? But wasn't it, after all, the situation itself he was experiencing, divine? Wasn't God nothing more than something inconsistent, a thought, a conscience? Wasn't God the exact representation of the abstract? This, Andrés repeated to himself, when the monks’ eyes did not meet his. A mantra when he touched a painting and his fingertips did not brush the texture of the canvas

Still, a hiss. A snake that coiled around his trachea to whisper in his ear. The representation of all that is evil. You are not a god, you are nothing but a fallen angel, sent to the abyss of the underworld for your arrogance, for your hubris. God is one and perfect, and your defects gush out of your soul like spurts, wounds that will never heal, destined to bleed and reach your feet, leaving a trail of shame along your way.

But deep down, Andrés had never really been religious. And the snake disappeared every time he opened his eyes in the center of the chapel.

On the days when memories escaped like fish from a worn net, the path was always the same. Along the corridor, first room on the right and down the rabbit hole. It was a desperate search, like someone longing for an oasis in the desert. He needed to quench his thirst, to drink from that pool of water that were those clear blue eyes. But no matter how hard he searched, how much the ghost of his heart bled, split open in perfect halves. He wasn't there. He wasn't there and Andrés seemed to go crazy, walking around those walls that now seemed to him to be too high, too dark, too humid. There was no more beauty in that place, no more art in the vaulted ceilings and ancient floors. Now it was just a maze and its walls were remorse and the ceiling was guilt. He searched for his treasure everywhere, groping, staggering in those agonizing emotions. He searched the corridors, the rooms, the cells. Each empty room increased his thirst, his impatience, his all-consuming panic.

When he was human, he knew panic well. He had spent an entire childhood living with it, fighting against panic attacks on the agenda. Locked in his little room, away from the screams downstairs, he curled up at the foot of his bed and counted. He took a pencil in his little graphite-stained hands and wrote a number with each breath. On a sheet, on a wall, it didn't matter. Growing up, he looked at his hands and held up his fingers to keep the count. Later, he began to close his eyes and picture them in front of him.

Now, it was as if he were back at seven. When, for the first time, his breath was short and lungs struggled to move, silent tears streaming down his face. He felt the same helplessness as then, the shortness of breath with each gasp, the growing agitation of his movements.

He opened his eyes, and was in the centre of the chapel.

As time went by, he would sometimes wake up and have the uncomfortable feeling of not remembering anything too much. He looked around, and began to wander. A wayfarer in an abandoned street. Aimlessly. He walked around those walls and didn't recognize the people in the framed photos, strolling around until the next morning.

He would wake, walk, open his eyes again.

Then came the day he found him.

When he opened his eyes that morning, he heard the sound of an engine. Minutes later, painfully familiar faces entered the door. He didn't recognize them all, some of them were like old faded sketches. You remember the strokes, but not the when and where. One of them had thick glasses that slid across the bridge of his wide nose, and a stiff posture even as he walked. Andrés stared at his features, his jaw, cheekbones, eyes. That man, for him, had the same feeling of a forgotten word. The annoying minutes when you are looking, in the maze of your mind, for the phantasmagoric word you know the concept of, but whose order of letters you don't remember. And you stay there, on the edge of a razor, between everything and nothing, with a burning feeling in your chest.  
It seemed something important, it felt important.

Yet he did not remember.

But when Andrés noticed the figure behind him, immediately all the worry vanished. The restlessness, the annoyance, the discomfort. He saw Martín, and for a moment he ceased to exist. He stood there watching those people take their seats in his house, sit at forgotten tables and talk about a plan that he smiled at, but remembered only a few details about.  
He was an outside spectator, a camera that recorded events impartially. For a moment, he wondered if he had finally disappeared.

But Martín stood up walking towards the model of the bank, and Andrés felt an external force radiate him again.

It was that exact evening that he found the man sitting at those same tables, a dark patina shading the blue of his eyes. Martín sat uncomfortably in that creaking chair, moving and changing position as if the whole surface of the wood was covered in pins. His eyes were fixed on one point, and within them Andrés could read sadness, melancholy, but also affection, longing. He was looking at the portrait at the bottom of the room.

Andrés remembered well the day he painted it. Martín appeared behind him, a bunch of grapes in his left hand, and between one chew and another he called him a "pompous bastard". It was born as a joke, yet in his voice there were a thousand different shades of fondness. Andrés laughed and stated that all noteworthy artists had a self-portrait, and he certainly could consider himself as one.

He was surprised at the vividness of the memory, no bevels at the corners, no burns on the film. And he realized that his memory was nothing more than a reflection of that of Martín who, with shining eyes, continued to keep his gaze fixed on the canvas.

At that moment Andrés wondered if his own unearthly presence was nothing more than a memory of Martín, an extension of his mind, a hope.

"You had to be a hero."

The voice shook him, reverberating in missing limbs. The shrill voice that he had spent an indefinite time searching for, amid the rumble of the rain and the footsteps of the monks, was now harsh, suffering. The man got up from his chair and with a cadenced step approached the easel, his hands resting on the sides of his body were shaken by slight tremors.

"You had to be a hero because you had to be remembered, to have your grandiose exit from the scene, in grand style!"

He pursed his lips, as he did when something did not go as he planned, when something in his eyes seemed completely wrong. He did this when someone found mistakes in his plan and when Andrés first introduced him to a girlfriend.

"You only ever cared about yourself, you and only you."

Poison. This was what seemed to come out of his mouth, pure poison bottled deep in his soul. Drop by drop it dripped into his insides for years, rotting everything it touched. And now he was spitting it out to its rightful owner. To whom, years ago, was the one who gave him the first dose in a silver teaspoon.

“You left me behind as a used toy, because you no longer needed me. I was too broken, worn by then, for your taste. You made me dance by pulling my strings and then you dropped me in a corner, a fucking splintered puppet."

He was pointing at the picture accusingly, his index finger trembling as well as the corners of his lips. And then the first tear fell. Lonely along the face, a traitor. It left behind a trail that with the reflection of the moon seemed to be a crack, a crack in the marble mask that Martín had worn all day.

"You're not here."  
He said this with sudden amazement between sobs, a new finding. "You are no longer here, you are gone, you are not here."

Andrés could feel his sobs, his jerks, as if they were his own. He could feel his cheeks burning, but he didn't have a face. His lungs were in spasm, but he didn't have a chest.  
They remained there, consuming the pain of the other, until Martín opened his eyes.

"You tried to save me, but you condemned us both" a new resolve, sure voice, only the shadow of sobs. He wiped away his tears. "You broke your soul, and in the meantime you took mine away."

That morning, Andrés opened his eyes in the centre of the chapel.

Dawn came through the windows as usual, illuminating the walls with shades of orange. Little birds sang carelessly on nearby branches.

Along the corridor, first room on the right but this time no white rabbit. Only Martín in his bed, lashes on his cheekbones, sheets enveloping his body.  
Andrés moved without thinking, instinctively, as if they were movements woven into his unconscious from birth.

He lay down on the bed. Beside the man, so close that their limbs would have intertwined with the others, if Andrés still had them. Martín slept peacefully, his regular breathing coming out of his nose in small puffs. Andrés hoped he could feel that air on his face, like a sea breeze full of life. He hoped he could move that tuft of brown hair from his forehead, be able to stroke his newly shaved jaw and be able to kiss the lids that were closed on those two sapphires.  
But he could only look, and suffer. Because he was the cause of so much pain. Because Martín was right. He had killed them both in a stupid attempt to save what was dearest to him. He had wanted to preserve him, hide him under a glass bell like the Little Prince with his rose. But, without him, there was no one to water it. And now Martín was rotten, dry, full of thorns and rancor.

And Andrés had his soul in pieces. So in pieces that it had spread between reality and nothingness, lost in the folds of the universe, wedged between truth and imagination. Animated by his sense of guilt and kept in a cage by Martín's inability to let him go.

Forget me, let go of the kite rope, let me fly away from here until I am an unrecognizable dot in the sky, free me, open the lock, break these rusty chains.  
This, he wanted to whisper to him. But he didn't have a mouth.

It was night, the stars were shining in the sky, and Martín was in Andrés' room. He sat in his old armchair, the one facing a small table and next to the window. This was wide open and Martín was smoking a cigarette as he curled up in the sweater that had once been tight on his shoulders, but which now seemed to be swallowing him.

He was silent, thoughtful, and the cigarette was consumed more in the wind than in his lungs. Every so often he looked at the opposite armchair, the one where Andrés used to sit. Other times he looked at the bookcase, the easel surrounded by white canvases in the corner, the four-poster bed.  
"All your stuff is still here" he took a drag from his cigarette "you died without your stupid books around you."

He shook his head, as if to dismiss a silly thought, but then took a deep breath and straightened his back. “You died away from everything that defined you, almost as if that corpse had belonged to someone else. Almost as if you were still here with your paintings. "

And then he smiled at him. Martín smiled in his direction.

Andrés felt a fire burning him, blazing him with life. He felt as if he could touch the sky with a finger, the weight finally lightning on his shoulders, making him defy gravity.

But, Icarus also flew too close to the sun, and soon Andrés too fell into the sea.

"I knew I would find you here."  
A familiar voice said, moving away from the door behind Andrés and approaching Martín, whose gaze followed him.

"Sergio, it's an insult to your intelligence."

The man with the glasses gave a shy smile, standing stiffly in the room. "Tomorrow we'll leave, the big day is approaching"

Martín became silent again, shifting his gaze to the window. This did not seem to make the man wearing a blazer give up. "Martín, you have to listen to me."

"I am."

"Then look at me."

Martín turned again, his eyes dark. The man exhaled. "After this heist..." a sigh, "After your heist, let him go."

Martín laughed, but there was nothing amused in that vibration of vocal cords.

“Please, Martín. You miss him, we miss him. But you can't stop living. He has already done it for the both of us." He adjusted his glasses, a quick gesture dictated by anxiety, or to hide the pain.

Martín was silent for a few seconds, his body totally motionless on the chair, then he opened his mouth and the man lost all hope.

“Sergio, dearest, it is as if I were already dead. The memory of him is the only thing that keeps me alive."

Two mirror and connected situations. The sky reflected in the sea, two sides of the same coin. After all, the existence of Andrés and Martín has always been this.

Andrés opened his eyes in the centre of the chapel.

Along the corridor, first room on the right, the rabbit hole again. Martín was not there.

The research.

The maze.

The thirst.

The panic.

He opens his eyes

Room on the right.

Fall.

Research.

Maze.

Panic.

He opens his eyes.

Room on the right.

Who was he looking for?

Maze.

Panic.

He opens his eyes.

Which room?

Maze.

He opens his eyes.

Walk.

Sunset.

Sunrise.

Sunset.

Sunrise.

Martín never let the kite become a dot in the sky.


End file.
